Mar

15

2023

10:00—11:00 AM ET | 3:00 - 4:00 GMT

CGD TALKS

Women’s Land Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa

Daniela Behr, Economist, Women, Business and the Law, Global Indicators Group, Development Economics, The World Bank

Dan Nyaronga, Professor of Psychology and Human Development at SUNY-Empire State College

Beth Roberts, Director of the Center for Women’s Land Rights at Landesa

Ndamsa Thomas, Lecturer, Department of Economics at the University of Bamenda (Cameroon)

Evelyn Wamboye, CGD Non-resident Fellow and Associate Professor of Economics at Pennsylvania (Penn) State University DuBois

Moderator

Kehinde Ajayi, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of Gender at CGD

Evelyn Wamboye's presentation is available here and Ndamsa Thomas' presentation is available here. A link to the World Bank's Women, Business, and Law page is available here.

There is overwhelming evidence on the benefits of women’s land ownership for their own economic outcomes, as well as those of their wider communities and countries. Yet governments in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remain reluctant to either establish or proactively enforce laws that accord women equal rights to inherit land. Recent data from Women, Business and the Law reports show that:

76 out of 190 countries worldwide (including 31 SSA countries) limit women’s property rights
In 19 countries, women do not have equal ownership rights to immovable property
In 43 countries, men and women do not have equal rights to inherit assets as surviving spouses

This event will feature findings from the CGD working paper, The Paradox of Gender Equality and Economic Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Land Rights. A panel of experts will explore the persistent obstacles to women’s equal rights to inherit land and the practical ways these hurdles can be overcome.

Read the accompanying blog Land Rights, Gender Equality, and Economic Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa.